Tight-knit
by Katta
Summary: With the help of her family, Emma learns to knit. Or tries to...


Baby Neal was wearing a light green cardigan with a decoration of fluffy white lambs, and Emma just about melted into incoherence at the sight. Granted, Neal could have that effect all on his own, especially now that he had started to smile – and just as she was thinking that, he gave her a wide, toothless smile that made her throat tighten. As he waved his arms towards her, she gently took him out of his bouncy seat and held him in her arms, feeling the warmth of the baby against her pounding heart. Her family. Her beautiful _brother_ – and yet there was a treacherous longing to make him wholly hers, a yearning in her body that the fake memories of Henry's infancy couldn't quite still.

She was nowhere near ready for another child – heck, she wasn't used to being Henry's mother yet – but the possessive impulse still remained, along with a desire to do just about anything for this one baby in her arms. Knit him cardigans, make him a stroller or a playpen or _something_.

"I wish I could knit," she said, because it was the easiest of her wishes to vocalize.

"It's gorgeous, isn't it?" Snow agreed, coming up to put her arm around both of them. "It's his first time wearing it."

"Did Granny make it?" Emma asked, remembering her own baby blanket.

"David did."

"David," Emma repeated, mentally chastising herself for letting that surprise her. Prince or not, her father wasn't some chest-thumping caveman who couldn't deal with baby stuff, and the new house with separate upstairs bedrooms meant that she thankfully no longer had first-row seats to everything her parents were doing.

"He used to be a shepherd, remember?" Snow said, stroking a finger along the lambs on Neal's back. He sighed in contentment at the touch, causing another flutter in Emma's heart. "This is how they occupied themselves out in the field. Well. Possibly with somewhat fewer decorations."

Emma rocked Neal slowly and offered him her finger to hold instead of the lock of hair he'd grabbed onto. A thought struck her, and she had to swallow before asking, "Did he make anything for me when I was a baby?"

"He started on a cardigan, but he never had time to finish it. Towards the end, there was so much going on, with the war and trying to rule a country." Snow kissed Emma's hair, perhaps seeing her disappointment in her face. "I'm sure he'd knit you something now if you want."

"I'd like that," Emma said. She was too old for fluffy lambs, but the thought of a home-knitted sweater or other garment, that someone would take the time and effort to do that for her, was still comforting. It would be nice to be able to do something like that for Neal, or for Henry. "Do you think he'd show me how?"

"Of course," Snow assured her. "Ask him when he gets back. Maybe you'll catch on quicker than I did – I never quite made it out of kettle holder territory."

* * *

If she'd been alone, Emma would probably have waited until David had put the groceries down before asking him to teach her how to knit, but with Snow's elbow in her side there was no excuse for delay. So she asked, and David said yes with a surprised but warm smile. After that they stacked the groceries in the fridge, and got a call about a searing magic burst near the wishing well, and Elsa froze the bell tower, and Thomas got himself turned into a frog, and before you knew it two weeks had passed.

"Do you want to try knitting tonight?" David asked, one evening after they'd finally had time for a family dinner, on a night that Henry was staying with them too.

Emma hurried to rinse her dish and stick it in the dishwater. "Absolutely. Now?"

"No rush," he replied with a chuckle. "I'll go find the yarn."

"Me too!" Henry said, turning off the computer game he'd just turned on, homicidal garden plants forgotten. "I want to make a onesie for Uncle Neal!"

"A onesie is a bit much to start with," David said. "How about a bib?"

"Can it have lambs?" Henry asked, and David made a sceptical grimace.

"It can have stripes."

"Sold," Henry said. He beamed at his mother. "Cool, huh? Maybe you can knit me a sweater, afterwards. Or I can knit you one."

"Pace yourself, kid," Emma said. "Probably not after the first lesson." Seeing his expression, she added, "That's the end goal, though."

"Don't be surprised if it takes a while," Snow added. "Knitting can be harder than it looks."

As it turned out, it could be a whole _lot_ harder, at least for Emma. Henry soon got the hang of it after David cast on the stitches, and worked away at the bib with determined energy. Snow stuck to making a little blue kettle holder, one of her feet under Neal's seat to keep it bouncing, though the tip of her tongue, visible between her teeth, showed her concentration. Meanwhile, Emma simply couldn't get those slippery loops to stay on the needles.

"Gah, I dropped another one!"

"You got to pull them tighter, mom!" Henry chirped.

"If I pull them any tighter," she gritted out, "I don't get the needle in at all, and they fall off anyway!"

"Give it to me," David said, reaching out a hand for the offending item. "I'll pick them up for you. Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it eventually."

"Yeah, if there's no new magical emergency in the next five _years_, and what are the odds of that?"

Emma knew that she was being childish, but it was hard not to be, when she kept having to repeat the first five rows over and over, what with all the dropped loops and restitching. Hell, even Henry's uneven and grubby attempt at a bib was at least in one piece.

She worked in seething silence for a couple of rows, getting a sense of triumph when she managed to keep all the loops on – a triumph that quickly subsided when she found a suspicious hole further down.

"Oh, da...rn it!"

Henry started giggling. "Maybe you could. Darn it, I mean. It'd be quicker than reknitting it.

"But it wouldn't look as good," David said. "Give me."

"You spend as much time unraveling this thing as I do knitting it," Emma said, but handed it over.

The doorbell rang, and Emma rose from her chair to get it.

"Saved by the bell!" Henry called.

"Oh, shut up," she said.

Before she could reach the door, the ringing was followed by the kind of metallic thumping that could only come from one person, and when she opened, Killian greeted her with a warm smile. "Hello, Swan. It's a quiet evening, so I was wondering if you're free for drinks? Or some other activity of your choosing?"

"I... Yes, but..." Part of Emma wanted nothing more than to escape the disastrous knitting and go off on a date, but at the same time, she didn't want to admit defeat. Besides, for once, her family was gathered, doing something together, and she didn't want to escape _that_. She wanted it to encompass everyone, even Killian, but...

"We're knitting," Henry said, holding up his work to show it.

David added, "You're welcome to join in, if you want."

"David!" Emma scolded, but to her surprise, Killian only shrugged.

"Aye, if you don't mind the intrusion. And if you'd rather stay in than go out?" He quirked an eyebrow at Emma.

"You knit," she said flatly.

"It's been years since last I tried, but I think I still remember how," he said, striding into the room.

"But..." Even though he'd taken to wearing Storybrooke leather jackets and jeans, the cocky stride and skull jewelry, not to mention the hook, still spoke of his piratical past. The thought of Captain Hook knitting baby clothes was wrong on so many levels, and she struck to expressing the most blatant one. "One-handed?"

"Don't really have much choice," he said and started to rummage through the yarns in the basket.

"It's not so hard," David said. "I can do it too. Very useful if you've got unruly sheep around."

Killian looked up and grinned. "I'm sure you can beat me with one hand tied behind your back and all, mate." He fished out a black ball of yarn with his hook. "There were are!"

"You can have mine if you want," Snow suggested, picking up Neal, who was making the kind of sounds that weren't crying yet, but were soon about to be.

Killian gave her abandoned knitting a sceptical glance. "Thank you for the offer, your highness, but I think I'd rather attempt a piece of my own. We all have our own different knitting styles."

"Oh, tactful!" Snow laughed, yet still turned aside as she took to feeding Neal, perhaps not entirely trusting Killian's tact.

Emma made her way back to her chair and watched in disbelief as Killian shoved the needles in under his elbow and added a series of stitches to them. When he proceeded to actual knitting, still with one needle stuck under his elbow, she shook her head.

"You knit. You really do knit."

"I think it's cool," Henry said.

"Thank you, lad," Killian said. He watched Emma thoughtfully. "What's the matter, love? You're not usually this surprised at my skills."

"It's just..." She flailed for an explanation. "Not very piratey."

"Mostly it's women who do the knitting in this world," Henry explained. "But that's sexist. Boys can do it too."

"I know they can," Emma protested. "I have to readjust my expectations, that's all."

Killian's smile was getting closer to a full-on laugh as he replied, "Pirates spend many long days out at sea waiting for ships to plunder, and we all need clothes. Knitting is a good way to pass the time. I am only chagrined that I never mastered socks."

Emma picked her knitting back up, figuring that if everyone up to and including Killian could manage to learn the trick, it shouldn't be impossible for her.

She knitted another row before dropping a loop and then, as she tried to pick it up, unraveling the stitches even further.

"For the love of...!" she shouted.

Killian's eyes glittered. "You were saying?"

"Shut up, you," she said. "I can't believe you're better at this than me!"

Reaching into the basket, she took a ball of yarn and lopped it at his head. He caught it with ease, but in doing so caused his own yarn to roll down onto the floor and several feet away.

"So angry," he teased as he picked it back up. "Can't you stand me being your master at something?"

"Something, sure," she said. "Sailing, or navigation, or..."

"Pirate skills," he said, and despite his smile there was a gravity underneath that made her wonder if she'd stepped out of line.

"Do you have any other talents I'm not aware of?" she asked. "Embroidery? Crochet?"

"Actually," he replied, the light returning to his eyes, "on the shores of Cockaigne they know me as Capitaine Crochet."

Emma groaned. "I walked right into that one, didn't I?"

David and Snow chuckled, but Henry frowned. "I don't get it."

"Crochet is Cockaignese – and French – for hook," Snow explained.

Emma tried again in vain to pick up her loop. Determined not to give the knitting to David once again, she finally resorted to magic, letting it bubble up inside her, just enough to make her fingertips tingle and the yarn reloop itself into neat stitches, sliding back onto the needle.

"Mom! That's cheating!" Henry protested.

"Well, that's one way of doing it, I guess," David said drily, and Snow, looking over her shoulder, gave her a sympathetic glance.

As for Killian, he looked like he'd been given high quality chocolate with a siding of rum. "Nothing wrong with a bit of cheating if it gets the job done," he said.

"How pirate of you," she countered.

"Hmm... what's that saying, again, about the pot and the kettle?" he asked, tasting every word. "You know there's a pirate inside of you."

"What, no 'or about to be'?" she asked, everyone else momentarily forgotten until David coughed.

"Is this when we excuse ourselves and put Henry to bed?"

"It's only half past eight!" Henry protested.

"Please don't," Emma said, chastened. "We'll behave ourselves."

Killian buried his fingers in her hair, playing with the long locks. "Speak for yourself."

"Stick to your knitting," she said, slapping his hand away.

"I'm just giving you some time to catch up."

"I don't need any favors from you!"

There was an amused glance passing between her parents, which Emma deliberately chose not to overanalyze as she returned her attention to keeping her stitches as neat as she could.

Henry had switched from blue to white and now held his knitting out for David to switch it back to blue.

"You know," David said as he did so, "I can't recall ever having a knitting party like this before. It's a nice feeling."

"I think the proper term is 'circle'," Snow said, leaning herself and Neal against him. "And no, I haven't either."

Killian smirked, and Emma got a mental image of a bunch of pirates sitting together in a knitting circle, with tea and crumpets. No, rum and ship's biscuits. Clearly she was not the only one, because Henry snickered.

"Oh, Killian, _please_ tell me you have!"

"Like this?" Killian asked. "No, never. What of you, lad, have you?"

"Well... it's a bit like crafts class, isn't it?"

The mere mention was like a bucket of cold water down Emma's back. "God, I hated crafts," she said. "I never got to finish anything." She wondered how many half-made items were still lying around in classrooms all over the US, after she moved away. Most likely it had all been thrown out.

"I had plenty of time to finish," Henry said matter-of-factly. "I had the same lesson every week for a year. Then a new lesson next year when I aged up. You have no _idea_ how boring things could get around here until you broke the curse."

As depressing childhood memories went, that gave hers the run for the money, and Emma reached out to stroke Henry's cheek. "Well, this is much nicer, then."

He smiled at her. "And you'll get a chance to finish."

"You bet your ass that I will."

* * *

Maybe it was the memories from crafts class that made Emma so determined not to give up, or maybe it was just sheer doggonedness, but she stuck with her knitting longer than anyone else. Snow was the first to give up, taking the sleeping Neal to bed and only coming back down to say that she was too tired to continue, which wasn't so strange. Henry claimed after a while that his hands ached, and then he sat for another hour playing videogames, which didn't strike Emma as that much easier on the hands. After Henry had started yawning, David excused the both of them, and it was down to Emma and Killian.

Not long after that, Killian put his knitting down, rolled his shoulders and asked, "You're really not going to quit?"

"I think I'm getting the hang of it," she said. "It's eight whole rows now with no dropped loops!"

"Well, this is getting damned uncomfortable," he said, stretching out on the sofa, "so if you don't mind I'm going to just watch you for a while."

"You do that," she said, eyes still on her work.

She didn't know how long she kept going, but she did know that she made it as far as fifteen rows, and possibly longer. Her head felt increasingly heavy, and she must have dozed off, because the sound of Neal whimpering nearby made her jolt awake and ask, dizzily, "Henry?"

"Sorry," Snow whispered, rocking her son up and down. "I didn't mean to wake you, I just saw that you were still down here."

"Fifteen rows," Emma said and searched for her knitting, which had slid dangerously low on the needles. She pushed the yarn back up and put the whole thing on the table.

"Do you want a blanket?" Snow asked. "Or are you going to bed?"

"Bed, definitely," Emma said, trying to find her footing.

Her bed seemed light years away, but that chair wasn't suitable for even an hour of sleep, much less a whole night. She moseyed her way to the floor lamp and was about to turn it off when she spotted a dark figure still splayed on the sofa. His knitting had fallen to the floor, ball of yarn unrolled several feet, so she rescued it and put it next to her own on the table.

"Although if you do have an extra blanket..." she said.

Snow smiled. "I'll go get it."

It occurred to Emma, tottering off to bed, that while the knitting itself had been a frustrating task, and she hadn't managed to finish something for Neal, the evening had brought all of _them_ closer together, and maybe that was a more important goal. She certainly wouldn't mind having another go.


End file.
